More, Who Can Afford To, Are Leaving Public School

New Report Says a Majority of Public School Students Are Poor. Why Else Would They Be There?

I’m not sure I understand why anyone would be surprised at the news reported by Bloomberg: “Majority of U.S. Public-School Children Are Living in Poverty.”

A majority of U.S. public-school children are living in poverty for the first time in half a century.

Fifty-one percent of public-school students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch in 2013, the Southern Education Foundation said in a report. In Mississippi, the poorest state, 71 percent of students were in the category, a proxy for low income.

“The economy has simply failed to provide enough higher-income jobs to keep folks from being in or near poverty,” Steve Suitts, vice president of the Atlanta-based foundation, said Friday by e-mail.

All right, but a half a century ago I suspect there were far fewer church schools, private schools for middle class parents, and far fewer parents who homeschooled. I agree that this economy is terrible, but would this demographic information really be evidence of how bad it is?

An increase in births among low-income families and a decline among wealthier Americans contributed to the change in poverty rate, said Suitts, who wrote the report. Poor children last made up a majority of public-school students in the 1960s, a trend that was reversed through President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, Suitts said.